Did Japan Lie About Climate in Games Proposal?

As Olympic athletes compete in an extremely hot and humid Tokyo, some are wondering why Japanese officials promised moderate temperatures for the Games in their proposal to land the event.

“With many days of mild and sunny weather, this period provides an ideal climate for athletes to perform their best,” Japanese officials wrote in their proposal to the International Olympic Committee, according to Yahoo Sports.

Events have now been moved earlier to try and beat the heat, but the temperature at start time still reached 85 degrees and 67.1 percent humidity. Daytime temps have hit the mid to upper 90s, with dew points in the mid-70s, leading to heat indexes in the triple digits.

“Playing in extreme heat and humidity, it’s very challenging,” said Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic. “It’s something we’ve known coming into Tokyo, we heard and expected the conditions would be very tough, but before you come here and experience that, you don’t really know how difficult it is.”

“Meteorological conditions during the proposed Games-time would be reasonable,” Japan’s proposal promised, but conditions have been anything but.

Yahoo Sports cited a column written immediately after Tokyo landed its bid for the games back in 2014. The column by Robert Whiting took issue with Japan’s claims of mild temperatures in late July and early August. 

“I have been to Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, Phnom Penh and Singapore in mid-summer and in my experience Tokyo is the worst of them all,” Whiting wrote. “The only conceivable places that are worse would be staging the games in, say, Death Valley, California, or the Horn of Africa.”